Robert Frost's Poetry Emphasizes the Harsh Struggle of Man Against Nature's Forces

Robert Frost's poet voice addresses the indifference of nature to man. He speaks of the harsh rural struggle of average people and blames nature for their appallingly abject lives. The poet stresses the brutality of nature but hails people's capacity to survive harsh realities and yet exhibit incredible resilience when they are in deep despair. His poetic form lauds man's ability to make the right choices. A spiritual motif of redemption emerges from Frost's poetry form that equates Job's biblical trials and tribulations or Jeremiah's outcry in the biblical Book of Lamentations.

Frost's poetry is accessible and is easily understood. The poetic commentary invites people to emotionally participate in his social discussion. He never used free verse but instead frequently used blank verse for a vivid outcome.

In "After Apple Picking," Frost explores the theme of boredom in an individual's life. The poem depicts an apple picker who is aging and is tired of the cycle of life as well as the repetitive apple picking. The apple picker chafes over a disrupted sleep pattern borne of weariness that may precede death. Frost uses a simple tool of the apple picker's job, a ladder, to weave in the idea of an idyllic fatigue since the ladder points upward to heaven where God is.

The apple picker is undoubtedly tired, but he is not a revolutionary sociopath plotting to destroy everything in sight because his life seems worthless. He recognizes that the apples are worth picking but is simply tired of picking apples. Frost bemoans the maddening existence of the apple picker.

The poet expresses impatience over the absurdity of nature in "Mending Walls." He complains that neighbors must make sure the wall is still in place after winter's freeze and spring's thawing cycle. He is annoyed about the redundant activity of repairing the wall that is always falling down due to the freeze that lies underneath the structure and the sun's rays beating down on top of it. Frost injects poetic humor as he also questions the necessity for a fence at all since there are no cows to fence in.

Good fences make good neighbors is an expression for the person uttering such words, Frost hints, and he contends that a wall is a barrier and that nature hates walls and destroys walls. He questions the need for such order in man's life. Remarkably, he gives no answers for these actual observations.

Frost utilizes clever sarcasm about a house in the woods in the poem "Stopping by Woods" as he asks "Whose house is this?" He ridicules the issue of property ownership, since the owner does not occupy the property.

He also compares the deep and dark woods to death. There is no immediacy of death though and so yes life is a struggle, but Frost suggests that there is a wish to just simply rest as the years glide by while moving towards the final rest of death. He calmly introduces a death motif while stopping in the woods. Nature is not the struggle in this poem Frost intones, but he repeats that life is a struggle anyway.

"Country Things" demonstrate the power of nature and solidifies the poet's theme that nature rules. A house has caught fire, and this tragedy affects man. Preparation for the winter was already underway with mowed hay on the stacks. The birds from their perch appear to be moaning as the house burns to the ground, the poem proposes, and nature is perceived as uncaring while the devastation unfurls. Frost concludes from that scenario that man is just another creature and by no means special, and he reasons that the birds are not crying but that man instead is crying

Frost promotes a realistic approach toward nature's indifference to man in the poem "Design," and he implies that a design governs all life. The spider schemes to capture a moth, he informs us. The moth is a member of the spider's food chain. Man, on the other hand, strives to survive nature's angry onslaught that is totally impersonal. Frost bolsters his case that indeed nature is truly not in unity with man and that there is very little man can do to prevent nature's wrath.